March 04, 2007	Sunday	Safar 14, 1428

ST. PETERSBURG (Russia), March 3: At least 2,000 Russian protesters broke through police lines and blocked St Petersburg’s main thoroughfare on Saturday in an unusually bold show of opposition to the Kremlin.

The demonstrators, shouting “Freedom!” and brandishing orange flares, dispersed after about one hour but earlier police in riot gear and wielding truncheons tussled with protesters.

Police said they had detained dozens of people.

Authorities in St Petersburg, Russia’s second city and hometown of President Vladimir Putin, forbade the protest saying it would cause too much disruption.

Protesters defied that ban, pushing through several police cordons to march about two km down the city’s Nevsky Prospect before stopping in front of a line of hundreds of riot police backed by armoured jeeps.

Protest leaders said they were staging a “march of the discontented” to resist what they called the Kremlin’s tightening grip on power and to demand a fair presidential election next year.—Reuters